"Francisco Goldman's The Ordinary Seaman: The Spectralization of the Other and the Zombie”

Abstract

This volume is the product of a joint effort to bring together critical views "from the Old World" on the field of American Studies. The contributors are leading Americanists working in Spanish academia who believe in the importance of working on American Studies from a multidisciplinary, inclusive perspective. The volume constitutes a testimony to the current state of research on American Studies in Spain, which occupies a key position in the transatlantic appreciation of the field. Ranging from Romanticism to Postmodernism, form the human to the post-human, from the Salem witchcraft trials to the Holocaust, from the Other to the Zombie, from fiction to history, from African-American slavery to Native-American reservations, from Spanish Unamunian philosophy to Whitmanesque poetry—to name just a few of the themes discussed in these pages—this entire volume is grounded on a transatlantic vision and dialogue, which has taken on great importance after the so-called "transatlantic turn." All in all, this book provides the critical gaze of the "expert outsider" who is able to offer a somewhat different but complementary point of view, which can only enrich the general appreciation of American Studies.